Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Abarr, Q.
• Awaki, H.
• Baring, M.G.
• Bose, R.
• De Geronimo, G.
• Dowkontt, P.
• Errando, M.
• Guarino, V.
• Hattori, K.
• Hayashida, K.
• Imazato, F.
• Ishida, M.
• Iyer, N.K.
• Kislat, F.
• Kiss, M.
• Kitaguchi, T.
• Krawczynski, H.
• Lisalda, L.
• Matake, H.
• Maeda, Y.
• Matsumoto, H.
• Mineta, T.
• Miyazawa, T.
• Mizuno, T.
• Okajima, T.
• Pearce, M.
• Rauch, B.F.
• Ryde, F.
• Shreves, C.
• Spooner, S.
• Stana, T.-A.
• Takahashi, H.
• Takeo, M.
• Tamagawa, T.
• Tamura, K.
• Tsunemi, H.
• Uchida, N.
• Uchida, Y.
• West, A.T.
• Wulf, E.A.
• Yamamoto, R.

Titel

XL-Calibur – a second-generation balloon-borne hard X-ray polarimetry mission

Ist Teil von

• Astroparticle physics, 2021-03, Vol.126, p.102529, Article 102529

Ort / Verlag

Goddard Space Flight Center: Elsevier B.V

Erscheinungsjahr

2021

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• XL-Calibur is a hard X-ray (15-80 keV) polarimetry mission operating from a stabilised balloon-borne platform in the stratosphere. It builds on heritage from the X-Calibur mission, which observed the accreting neutron star GX 301 - 2 from Antarctica, between December 29th 2018 and January 1st 2019. The XL-Calibur design incorporates an X-ray mirror, which focusses X-rays onto a polarimeter comprising a beryllium rod surrounded by Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT) detectors. The polarimeter is housed in an anticoincidence shield to mitigate background from particles present in the stratosphere. The mirror and polarimeter-shield assembly are mounted at opposite ends of a 12 m long lightweight truss, which is pointed with arcsecond precision by WASP – the Wallops Arc Second Pointer. The XL-Calibur mission will achieve a substantially improved sensitivity over X-Calibur by using a larger effective area X-ray mirror, reducing background through thinner CZT detectors, and improved anticoincidence shielding. When observing a 1 Crab source for tdaydays, the Minimum Detectable Polarisation (at 99% confidence level) is ∼2%·tday−1/2. The energy resolution at 40 keV is ∼5.9 keV. The aim of this paper is to describe the design and performance of the XL-Caliburmission, as well as the foreseen science programme.